James Small was excited and nervous. After much rejection, his autobiographical novel about a mother and her son finally made it to a major publisher in 1992. His agent sends him to the Holy Hall of the New York publishing house to meet his new publisher. He was so nervous that he kept joking and apologized to the woman who had brought him into the conference room for her meeting. The publisher later resigned, and is none other than Jackie Kennedy Onassis (he actually worked as the publication's editor for some time in the 1990s). From that first awkward encounter, he began working with her (with her !) To prepare her book for editing and publication. Ironically, his relationship with his mother was uncertain (they rarely spoke) because he was angry about writing about his family and her, even though it was covered in the form of a novel. Jackie - she likes Mrs. Onassis at work - invites her home for her vacation on Martha's Vineyard, and the two become friends when she guides her book on what she thinks is possible. She encourages him to meet his mom and talk about something, saying it's necessary for his book because it doesn't have a strong ending. The result is a hilarious and scary Thanksgiving weekend when a big family secret is revealed. While James worked slowly and carefully on his personal problems and edited his novels, Mrs. Onassis was at his side.
When I read the premise of this novel, I was expecting something light and ridiculous and I was able to play with the idea of working with a young writer and a woman as famous as her publisher. And the novels are ridiculous, with lots of laughter as James struggles with his neuroses and communicates with his brothers. But I was shocked by the novel's emotional complexity, because James and his mother - both in real life and in her fictional world - overcame their problems and got to know each other better as adults. The novel also suggests a parallel between Jackie's life as a mother and what she reads in James's novel, although she is a very private person who talks very little about her personal life. Most of my readers liked this novel (with an average rating of 7.1 out of 10) and we had a good discussion. It's fun to imagine the real life of a big celebrity like Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and I really enjoyed the author's sense of humor, but the magic of this book lies in exploring family dynamics and mother-daughter relationships.
308 pages, son of GP Putnam
Penguin sounds
This book is part of the following 2022 Reading Challenge :
The March monthly pattern is floating around in the book and this is important!
Alphabet soup challenge - e
Challenges of diversity
Literary Escape Challenge - Another New York!
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